Are you a teen mother and trying to find job and a place of your own to live? Homeless and needing a place to get out of the cold? Glenda Buckhalter could be your new best friend.
Buckhalter, who is finishing her first year as community outreach coordinator for the city of Columbus, knows something about life’s challenges.
“I got pregnant in high school and it was not a good thing for me,” she says.
Buckhalter didn’t know her father until she was 12, but she had a strong mother and supportive grandparents.
“If you lay around all day, you’re not going to be anything,” her grandmother told her.
At 16 the young mother got up and went to work at Burger Wheel, one of the few fast food places in her hometown of Macon.
Buckhalter was determined her two teenage daughters wouldn’t repeat her mistakes.
“If you want to have sex, come to me and I’ll help you,” she told them, adding, “If you get pregnant during school you will have to take care of the child. I will help you get an apartment.”
Buckhalter says it’s difficult to over emphasize the importance of having a father in the home.
“When your father isn’t there you’re walking around with a hole in your heart,” she said. “The first guy who says ‘I love you’ has got you.
“We always said, ‘I love you,'” said Buckhalter, who was married for 21 years. “My kids didn’t have to look for love.”
She couldn’t have known at the time, but her experience as a young mother was invaluable training for a job she would hold years later.
Most recently, Buckhalter was public information officer for the Columbus Police Department. While at CPD she volunteered with Josie Fannon, who she succeeded. Fannon has high praise for her protege.
“I’m glad she was there when I retired,” said Fannon. “She taught me a lot of things about people.”
As did Fannon, Buckhalter helps the working poor and young mothers find work, housing and pay light bills. She secures temporary shelter and clothes for disaster victims — the day we talked, she was scrambling to find victims of an apartment fire a place to stay. She finds refuge for the homeless and women fleeing domestic violence.
Her office provides the Greater Good Workshop, a program where professionals like Ryan Munson, Jackie Stennis and Anna Cunningham volunteer their time for workshops on job preparation, personal responsibility and budgeting.
“We want to remove the excuses to fail,” Buckhalter says.
She faces no shortage of challenges. Waiting on Buckhalter when she comes to work each day are 30 to 40 voice-mails from people in need.
But you had better be ready to help yourself if you want Glenda Buckhalter in your corner. A couple of girls in need of jobs, who failed to show up for a Buckhalter-arranged interview at McDonald’s, have moved to the back of the line.
Amid the frustrations, there are small victories. A counter person at Popeye’s she helped get a job is taking online courses at MUW.
“If one young person walks away and says, ‘I’m going to college,’ I’m happy,” Buckhalter says.
Many girls, she says, are prisoners of their own low aspirations. They tell her they want to be a cashier.
“They can’t conceive of being more,” she says. “They are comfortable just getting by.”
Buckhalter’s office in the far corner of a suite that houses the city planning and zoning department looks equal parts food pantry, Salvation Army thrift store and office. She dismisses the clutter, saying she gets calls in the middle of the night from people who are hungry or need clothes.
She has started a non-profit, Building Bridges of Hope, to amass a pool of money to allow her to respond to crippling emergencies that beset local families. Fairview Baptist Church has been one of the program’s biggest supporters thus far, she says.
“She wants to get people out of poverty,” Fannon says of Buckhalter. “It’s a hard job because at the end of the day all you’ve heard are bad things.”
Yet each day this determined woman returns to her cluttered office in the back of a strip mall and tries to make hopeless situations a little less so. She needs your help and support. If you have ideas or would like to help, call Glenda Buckhalter at 662-244-3525
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 41 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.